Guild Wars 2

I’ve been using staffs since I’ve hit 80 with my character. I thought it was the best choice for trying to do the most amount of damage while still being useful to a group. I mostly PvE and with a tad bit of WvW but I do prefer PvE over and sort of PvP.

My gear is mostly PPC with my accessories focusing on PVT. I’m currently specced at 30/30/5/5/0 which I recently just switch to after using 30/10/10/10/10. I found that survivability isn’t really an issue because I balance between offensive and defensive spells. My problem is the lack of damage I’m able to produce. I usually focus staying in Fire because it’s pretty much the biggest source of damage with generally short cool downs. I’ve notice that Fireball seems to have a rather large casting time and that really gets in the way of the true burst like DPS the staff should be able to bring.

My ultimate question is should I stay staff or should I switch? And if I stay staff is it not viable to mainly focus Fire and only use the other attunements when absolutely necessary. Thanks for taking the time to read and respond, I look forward to getting feedback!

I love staff. It’s not the most optimal single-target damage choice, but that’s why you round up 5-6 mobs at once to make up for it :-P

You really should never just sit in a single attunement. The other 3 may not be as damage focused, but they put conditions on your targets which add to your overall DPS.

As a staff Elementalist, I strongly suggest picking up Arcana Wave for utility, picking up the 30 point Evasive Arcana trait in Arcane, and using Eruption (Earth 3) to set up blast finishers.

Staff Eles are the absolute masters of setting up their own combo fields and self-finishing them, it’s my opinion that a staff Ele not constantly doing this is wasting a lot of their potential.

Explain to me how you exactly set up your own combo field. I’ve always realize that there was potential in doing so but never really got around to mastering it.

And is the condition damage really worth it? I heard a lot of negative opinions about condition damage. I for one use to “stance dance” a lot but when I started observing other Elementalists and reading forum posts I started doing it less and less.

By the way I absolutely love Arcane Wave.

Here is a copy/paste on the topic that I wrote up for a guildie… there might be a few things in here that don’t apply to your question, but the rest should cover it:

Attunement dancing is pivotal to playing Elementalist well.
Here is an exercise that I think will help you really get the feel for it. It utilizes the Staff (for the exercise… you’ll see why in a minute) but will help you immensely with your D/D game. Once you feel you’ve mastered this exercise, I think attunement dancing will be a lot more natural for you and will be applicable regardless of your weapon choice.

1. Go to the Heart of The Mists, grab a staff from the PvP Vendor, Grab the Energy sigil for your staff (The one that replenishes endurance on weapon swap).
2. Head over to the target/training dummies.
3. Trait for Evasive Arcana. (Do NOT grab the trait that increases your staff AOE field size… You want to keep the fields small for practice, it will force you to be more accurate).
4. Grab the Arcane Wave Utility Skill.

The whole point of this exercise is to set up your own combo fields and finish them. With a staff Ele, you have combo fields in 3 out of 4 of your attunements and the 4th attunement (Earth) is the one that is used to finish them. In order to successfully set up and finish your fields, you will be REQUIRED to dance between attunements, and the smaller AOE field (from not taking the trait to increase the size) means you will have to be accurate with both your field placement and positioning yourself to finish them.

Here are your combo FIELDS for each staff attunement and what a BLAST finisher will do to them (will be focusing on BLAST finishers due to importance of positioning and to keep a steady pace):

FIRE:
Lava Font (Area Might)
Burning Retreat (Area Might)

WATER:
Geyser (Area Healing)
Frozen Ground (Area Frost Armor)
Healing Rain (Area Healing)

AIR:
Static Field (Area Swiftness)

Here are you FINISHERS…

EARTH:
Stoning (Projectile Finisher… don’t worry about this one for now)
ERUPTION (THIS is what you’ll focus on most)
—Evasive Arcana: While attuned to Earth only, at the end of your dodge roll you will trigger a blast finisher!!!

And of course, Arcane Wave (Utility Skill). This is your “filler” blast finisher so you can keep things going even when your Earth attunement is on cooldown.

Ok, so in a nutshell you just want to blast finish as many fields across as many attunements as you can in as rapid succession as you can. There are a couple of ways to set this up…

1. Lay down ERUPTION first and then immediately switch to another attunement and lay down your combo field on top of eruption. If successful, your eruption will blast after you’ve put a field over top of it and you’ll get the effect. If you don’t nail it right away, keep at it… it gets easier. I can telegraph them now while running/strafing in the heat of battle and lay out an Eruption/Geyser heal ahead of a retreating ally so that it’s timed to blast as he/she hits it… it is an intensely gratifying feeling. Do this pre-Eruption combo with all of your fields so you get a sense for the timing involved, which attunements net which benefits, etc.

2. Lay down a FIELD first and then immediately switch to EARTH attunement and dodge-roll into your field, thus causing Evasive Arcana to trigger your blast finisher.

3. Lay down a FIELD first and then use Arcane Wave to finish it… this way you can save your Earth-switch for the next blast or if Earth is on CD.

Those are the 3 ways to finish a combo field with a staff Ele. With practice you will be able to pop a blast finisher on your own fields every few seconds. MOST IMPORTANTLY THOUGH you will have to dance between attunements to make this happen, which really is the whole point of this exercise… and if by chance you haven’t already become intimately acquainted with combo fields and finishers, this will go a long way in helping develop that awareness as well (keep in mind you can set up fields for others to finish and likewise can finish other people’s fields). You’ll also get very good at positioning and more accurately dodging.

Remember: You will have to be “in combat” with a training dummy for Evasive Arcana to proc. Also, don’t forget that Burning Retreat is a field! (Despite not being a circle).

The arsenal of combo fields are pretty much a staff Ele thing, but the fundamentals that you will hone in this exercise are important for any Ele to master. You won’t be worrying quite so much about fields/finishers as a D/D Ele, but even D/D can make use of them occasionally… mostly you will be an attunement dancing pro with great positioning and more tactical dodging skills.

Cheers mate!
-Moxie

Regarding Conditions, I don’t necessarily mean condition DAMAGE… my spec has about zero condition damage to it. Rather I mean the conditions themselves making enemies weaker for all of your other attacks.

Ice Spike (Water 2) causes vulnerability, which increases all of your damage.
Frozen ground (Water 4) causes chill, which slows and causes longer casting recharge for enemies (slow is important for staff kiting multiple enemies)
Lightning Surge (Air 2) causes blindness. Nuff said.
Static field stuns, Stoning = weakness, Eruption = bleeding, etc. etc.

By cycling through your attunements and applying necessary conditions from all 4, you are significantly weakening your enemy while making your own attacks stronger.

But most importantly, it’s WAY less boring than sitting in 1 or 2 attunements.

Thanks for your really detailed response. I appreciate all the explanation. I will definitely will have to try these suggestions out. Again appreciate the detailed and speedy response, this was exactly what I was looking for, thanks!

Very helpful, thank you. I’ve been staff from the beginning and playing around with combos recently and it does make the game more fun!

You may find better results going more offensive with your equipment (Berserker Armor with Rubies and Emerald Accessories) and then specing something like a 0/20/0/30/20 spec. This gives you much more offense (that isn’t centered around fire attunement) through stats and a very high crit rating while maintaining your defense through cantrips and water line.

Im been using Staff since since beginning till level 80. My traits are 30/10/0/10/20. Though my damage are good for solo but cant survive raid, wvw or even pvp. i dont want to change to D/D since lots of forum keep mentioning it… Any advise how should i change my traits? and what tier to choose? trough this forum i saw the traits 0/0/10/30/30… was wondering what tier it use.

guccimamasan.1082:

Im been using Staff since since beginning till level 80. My traits are 30/10/0/10/20. Though my damage are good for solo but cant survive raid, wvw or even pvp. i dont want to change to D/D since lots of forum keep mentioning it… Any advise how should i change my traits? and what tier to choose? trough this forum i saw the traits 0/0/10/30/30… was wondering what tier it use.

You will need some toughness and vitality in your gear. At the very least high vitality if you carry little additional toughness. I recommend a high vigor source for plenty of endurance and dodges. Dodges are our best defense. I suspect that alot of your damage you are taking is condtion damage and you need to have several reliable ways to cleanse those.

Alot of dungeon survival is being in the right place and knowing how to avoid many of the bosses and mobs attacks. So, read up on those or ask advice if you can’t figure it out.

WvW and PvP is always going to be tough with PvP the toughest. For PvP you want a special build just for Pvp. The Pve and/or Wvw build just won’t do for that. The condition removal, high vitality, and dodges are even more important in WvW than Pve. You will also need stun breaks, swiftness, and CC. You are in light armor with low health. You can’t afford to get locked down, crippled or dotted up.

While it’s true that fire attunement has some of the staff’s hardest hitting abilities, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you’re not taking advantage of the other attunements’ crowd control and condition application. I myself run a rotation that begins and ends (usually) in fire attunement, but I hit the other three for their utility and extra damage in between.

My rotation is:
Arcane Power -> Meteor Shower -> Flameburst ->
Water Attunement -> Frozen Ground -> Ice Spike ->
Earth Attunement -> Eruption -> Unsteady Ground -> (Shockwave if I’m fighting a Veteran or sole large monster*) ->
Lightning Attunement -> Lightning Surge -> Static Field -> (Gust if I’m fighting a Veteran or sole large monster*) ->
Fire Attunement -> Lava Font -> Flameburst

At this point, things are usually dead. If not, I’ll drop another Lava Font on my location as they close reache me and activate Arcane Wave then use Burning Retreat to buy the space needed to finish them off (or begin the rotation anew if things have somehow gone horribly wrong).

If I’m fighting a Veteran or sole large monster I activate Signet of Fire as early as possible for 11 seconds of Burning, as I’m traited to do an extra 10% damage against Burning targets.

Now obviously this rotation is severe overkill against one or two trash mobs, in which case just fire attunement is more than enough to get the job done quickly.